{"id":535,"date":"2023-01-05T11:50:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T11:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/exhistoria\/?p=535"},"modified":"2023-01-05T12:11:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T12:11:39","slug":"alice-van-den-bosch-courtroom-drama-constructing-antagonist-and-audience-in-early-martyr-acta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/exhistoria\/2023\/01\/05\/alice-van-den-bosch-courtroom-drama-constructing-antagonist-and-audience-in-early-martyr-acta\/","title":{"rendered":"Courtroom Drama: Constructing Antagonist and Audience in Early Martyr Acta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Alice van den Bosch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Exeter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Martyrdom of St Crispina <\/em>(from hereon Crispina<\/em>), the eponymous heroine from Tebessa in Mauretania Caesarensis (a Roman province in North Africa) is brought before the proconsul Anullinus who asks her why she refuses to make a sacrifice to the Roman gods and gets increasingly frustrated by her opaque or evasive replies. After an escalation to threats\u2014including to have her head shaved in public\u2014he orders her to be executed at which she gladly embraces her martyrdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crispina <\/em>is in many ways typical of an early Christian martyr narrative (a literary genre collectively referred to as the Acta<\/em>, supposedly based on the trial proceedings) of the late third\/early fourth century CE. What is particularly notable is the prominence Crispina gets during the interrogation compared to other Acta<\/em> where the female martyrs have limited speech and airtime. The formulaic plots and familiar characters that populate the Acta<\/em>, not least the attention to the visual that martyrdom (from the Greek word for \u2018witness\u2019) entails, also make for an interesting comparison with the popular traditions of Roman drama, in particular comedies such as those of Plautus and Terence. For Late Antique audiences in North Africa, these types of spectacle and stories were very familiar. These same audiences were also absorbing and re-enacting stories of the early martyrs such as Crispina and her companions. It is with this more holistic approach that I intend to argue that the writers of this and other martyr narratives were drawing just as much on Roman theatrical traditions, and Roman comedy in particular, that would have been more than familiar to their Late Antique audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I will talk about some of the themes and parallels martyr Acta <\/em>share with Roman comedy, and how a deeper appreciation for some of these influences compares with and builds upon earlier scholarly approaches towards martyr texts. In the second section, I look at Crispina<\/em> as a case study of how this can shed new perspectives on the roles of audiences (inside the narrative as well as the communities re-enacting the stories), and the dynamic between the female martyr and the antagonist, which has been an often overlooked role. In this way I hope to think beyond these texts in a strictly literary context by recreating some of the world in which they were being created as well as how they would have been communicated and performed within their Late Antique communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier approaches, methodology, context<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The literature known collectively as the Acta <\/em>are many and varied. They incorporate mostly urban settings and their surroundings from across the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond and are populated with male and female martyrs and supporting characters from all levels of the Roman social hierarchy. As with Crispina<\/em>, these often involve the interrogation of the martyr or group of martyrs by a Roman official, the primary antagonist, and usually end in torture and\/or execution through which the figures on trial achieve their martyrdom, although this may be a very peripheral mention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous scholarship on the early martyr narratives saw them to different extents as being based upon \u2018authentic\u2019 court records, although in recent decades historians have taken a more critical view. These have included more sophisticated understandings of how different literary genres and identities were self-consciously constructed, as well as an unpicking of some of the rhetorical and ideological functions of such literature.[1]<\/a> By and large, these sorts of analyses have tended to be dominated by the more popular subjects such as Perpetua or Cyprian, both popular North African martyr-saints. While much shorter, Crispina<\/em> has received a fair share of attention, not least due to her frequent mentions in the sermons of the fourth century North African bishop Augustine, as well as showing up in archaeological evidence such as in the basilica at Tebessa in the so-called \u2018Basilica of St Crispina\u2019.[2]<\/a> Augustine presents Crispina as a wealthy, well born matron with children and as a famous African martyr on a level with other notable saints.[3]<\/a> All this appears very different to the Crispina we see  in the introductory synopsis, where there are virtually no descriptive details other than where she is from and a paean to her generic virtues of faith at the end. These extra details have led scholars to suggest Augustine was familiar with a different or fuller account than the one that survives today, a valuable reminder of the fluid and often oral origins of these stories prior to the fossilised versions of them transmitted down in medieval manuscripts.[4]<\/a> At Tebessa, a large basilica complex was excavated dating to the fourth century, which has been linked to Crispina on the basis of a fifth century inscription. This site seems to have been a popular pilgrimage site, with significant rebuilding work in the fifth and sixth centuries, following Justinian\u2019s brief reconquest of the province. As various scholars such as Anne Marie Yasin have described, visitors would be led through the Roman city to the sanctuary in its heart, an experience that would have involved multiple senses, memories and emotions.[5]<\/a> As I shall argue in this paper, the experience of communities engaging with stories of their martyrs could work similarly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, \u00c9ric Rebillard has challenged and problematised ideas of \u2018authenticity\u2019 and \u2018historicity\u2019 in the early martyr narratives, and instead proposed seeing them as \u2018living texts\u2019 (i.e., a more self-consciously literary format in which early Christian writers sought to shape these figures and questions of identity).[6]<\/a> From what we know about how Late Antique communities would have received and shared these stories, a great deal of emphasis would have been on them as oral performances. Though likely not staged as literal plays with actors, we do have references to the Acta <\/em>being read out to a congregation on their feast day and cited as praiseworthy examples in sermons. While there have been lots of comparative studies made between female martyrs and heroines from Classical tragedy (e.g. virgin sacrifices such as Antigone or Polyxena),the parallels between martyr plots and comedy plots are even more striking for being less considered. [7]<\/a> Several Roman comedies (e.g. Plautus\u2019 The Rope<\/em>) involve a young and beautiful female character in some sort of peril \u2013 arrested, kidnapped, sold into slavery, raped, threatened with torture\/sexual assault\u2014as a result of which their legal status and morals are challenged publicly, yet this drama is always proved to be temporary and by the end of the play\/narrative all has been resolved and usually ends in a marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This plot contains many of the basic plot elements of martyr narratives involving female martyrs. Also, lots of martyr narratives take place all or in part in a theatre or arena. Such meta-theatrical elements would have resonance with an audience hyper-aware of such factors. In our surviving examples of Roman comedies, they frequently drew attention to the actors, stage and audience such as asking for applause at the end of the play. Another key feature of Roman drama worth highlighting was its use of stock characters (indicated by their recognisable masks) such as the young lovers, the old man, crafty pimp, braggart soldier, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Plautus and Terence were writing in the third\/second century BCE, there are plenty of precedents from at least the first century CE onwards for how elements of comedy were integrated into all areas of Roman literature and society from poetry to law court speeches and rhetoric.[8]<\/a> There is also substantial evidence for continued performances (of plays, pantomimes and mime) in Late Antiquity, as gathered in Ruth Webb\u2019s Demons and Dance<\/em>. Another significant piece of evidence is in the sermons and writings by Christian authors such as Tertullian in the fourth century. In his work On Spectacles<\/em>, he gleefully imagines pagan players and tragic poets suffering in hell:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Here find your games of the circus,\u2014watch the race of time, the seasons slipping by, count the circuits, look for the goal of the great consummation, battle for the companies of the churches, rouse up at the signal of God, stand erect at the angel\u2019s trump, triumph in the palms of martyrdom. If the literature of the stage delight you, we have sufficiency of books, of poems, of aphorisms, sufficiency of songs and voices, not fable, those of ours, but truth; not artifice but simplicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, then, the poets trembling before the judgement-seat, not of Rhadamanthus, not of Minos, but of Christ whom they never looked to see! And then there will be the tragic actors to be heard, more vocal in their own tragedy; and the players to be seen, lither of limb by far in the fire.\u2019[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, these were full of invective against the theatre with all its perceived temptations for Christians. Yet the rhetoric used and the context of such public sermons themselves were also an inherently theatrical and performative act, a tension that these writers, such as John Chrysostom, were often uncomfortably aware of.[10]<\/a> With regards to martyr narratives, there are several examples of \u2018actor martyrs\u2019 such as Genesius of Rome whose initial performances mocking Christian rituals such as baptism results in a real conversion. Stephanie Cobb has also commented elsewhere on the \u2018slapstick\u2019 nature of botched executions such as torturers tripping over or collapsing with exhaustion while the martyrs remain completely unaffected.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prologues: where do the audience sit?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many martyr narratives open with a prologue, typically extolling the virtues of martyrdom and quoting from scripture. For example, in the Passio Perpetuae<\/em> the narrator opens by linking Perpetua and her companions directly back to the authority of earlier martyrs and exempla from the Old and New Testaments, even before the central characters have been individually introduced.Other martyr narratives, including Crispina\u2019s, begin by setting out the scene:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \u2018It was the fifth day of December in the ninth consulate of Diocletian Augustus and the eighth of Maximian Augustus in the colony of Tebessa. The proconsul Anullinus sat in judgement on the tribunal in his council chamber [in secretario] and the court clerk spoke.\u2019[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This opening is brief and formulaic, a fact which previous scholars have approached with assumptions of the text\u2019s self-awareness about its own form (i.e., trying to look like official court proceedings from the trial itself). But the familiarity of a Late Antique audience with such stories, as they would be read out or retold regularly on the martyr\u2019s feast day, among other occasions, renders this information technically unnecessary. Rather, as Kathleen McCarthy has shown in her analysis of several prologues from Plautus, the prologue may also function in such a way that \u2018bridges the world of the audience and the world of the characters\u2019.[13]<\/a> For example, the prologue to Plautus\u2019 Menaechemi<\/em>, a comedy of errors which involves identical twin brothers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

               \u2018This town in Epidamnus, while the play is on\/But when we play another play, its name will change\/Just like the actors living here, whose roles can range\/From pimp to papa, or to lovers pale and wan\u2026\u2019[14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In each opening, the narrator draws attention to the setting, and the familiar characters that people this world. Plautus\u2019 draws attention to the actors and theatre, but for the martyr\u2019s audience, names such as \u2018Diocletian\u2019 could similarly alert them to the world of the performance, especially when being performed on the anniversary of the martyr\u2019s death, perhaps in the town of Tebessa itself, and even within the basilica complex where audience members might simultaneously have been looking at inscriptions, pictures or relics. The audience, who are already connected to the events before them by being in the same space, are also transported back in time to this period of persecution by the names of the infamous emperors being evoked. In some sense, the same place but with very different circumstances draws the attention of the audience to these very differences. As McCarthy goes on to argue, while those on stage and the audience \u2018physically\u2019 \u2026 \u2018occupy the same space and time\u2019 \u2026 \u2018the world inhabited by those on stage is of a completely different order\u2019.[15]<\/a> The audience are also given the sense that they are listening in or are themselves witnessing this semi-private or intimate encounter between Crispina and her judge. This means that audiences of the texts would feel as if they are not so much hearing but over<\/em>hearing. They would also have been more than familiar with the process of Roman trials that would have been held in the public forum as part of the daily civic life of a Roman town. All of this together would have helped build a shared feeling within the audience of community, of being in the know or part of the group.[16]<\/a> In this sense the boundary between the audience and the characters becomes blurred and the audience have a role witnessing this reconstruction of this earlier history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female martyr vs. Antagonist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to her male counterparts, a great deal of the drama and tension comes from the female martyr being in this public (or quasi-public) space and the suspicion surrounding her status that would hold a question mark above her for a Late Antique audience familiar with literary and historical women from Classical Antiquity. The back and forth between Crispina and Anullinus is again comparable to similar interrogations in other martyr stories. Anullinus asks Crispina whether she knows why she is on trial and makes several attempts to reason with her and persuade her to recant, with his mounting frustration evidenced by the increasing severity of his threats. Crispina\u2019s responses typically mirror his questions but in such a way that confounds him, such as, for example, when he orders that she \u2018Must obey [the sacred edict]\u2019 and make a sacrifice, and she replies \u2018I will obey the edict [\u2026] but the one given by my Lord Jesus Christ\u2019.[17]<\/a> This dynamic is a familiar one from Roman comedies where a master poses an order or question to his wilier slave who either responds literally, refuses or otherwise subverts the expected social hierarchy, such as the beginning of Plautus\u2019 The Rope<\/em>, in which the master Daemones tries unsuccessfully to shut down his slave Sceparnio and order him around but Sceparnio keeps interrupting. The exchange between them seems like a role reversal from that of master and slave, where the latter similarly has no qualms about answering back or critiquing his master\u2019s comments. Similarly, Crispina acts completely unfazed despite the not-so-subtle power dynamics of her being in a court room on trial for her life. But further than this, there is also a conscious gendered dynamic between Crispina and Anullinus. In the plot of Plautus\u2019 Casina<\/em>, the old man falls inappropriately for a young girl who is also be his son\u2019s lover or even, in other cases, his own long-lost daughter. It is emphasised how inappropriate this interest is by the absurd actions he ends up going through, and how his supposed authority (his patriae potestas<\/em>) is undermined, if not completely ridiculed. Anullinus refers to Crispina as \u2018contemptrix<\/em>\u2019, \u2018stubborn\u2019 or \u2018despiser\u2019. This description of \u2018despiser\u2019 is a common accusation in other martyr narratives, for example The Martyrdom of Marian and James<\/em>, or The Martyrdom of Maximilian<\/em>. Yet, unlike some of these male martyrs whose public roles such as soldiers or bishops have brought them into direct conflict with the state\u2019s expectations of piety, with female martyrs there seems to be more of an explanation needed of why they are in the courtroom in the first place, alongside the automatic level of suspicion regarding the moral character of such a woman. This sexual tension is often literalised in passion stories such as Agnes\u2019s whose accusation and trial come about as a result of her wanting to preserve her chastity and rejecting the proposal of the prefect\u2019s son. Female martyrs, unlike their male counterparts, are framed by the end as triumphant \u2018Brides\/serving women of Christ\u2019. This could be read as a Christianised version of the typical \u2018happy ending\u2019 in Roman comedies where the young girl is revealed or confirmed to be virtuous and\/or of noble status meaning that she can be safely married off to her lover. In this sense, Crispina has rejected the \u2018bad\u2019 lover (Anullinus), but still safely married an appropriate partner (Christ) through her martyrdom. In both cases the societal fabric is safely restored, despite all the upheavals and comic misunderstandings that have been allowed to carry on within the previous narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This calls for greater attention on the characterisation of the antagonist, a crucial yet often overlooked figure in modern scholarship where he is usually depicted as either a frustrated but otherwise neutral representative of the state, or else a full-blown pantomime villain. While issues dating these texts make it difficult to see if there is any kind of character development over time, it is more useful perhaps, to ask what role this antagonist figure was playing for audiences. To see this outwardly respectable Roman official \u2013 to many audience members perhaps much more relatable than a figure like Crispina, who is initially morally dubious at best even if eventually vindicated\u2014behaving so foolishly and cruelly may have been just as shocking as the female martyr being presented in a court setting itself.[18]<\/a> In this way it was also about showing how Christianity could be non-threatening and more in line with so-called proper Roman values than the persecutor was.[19]<\/a> Also, to audiences long familiar with the conventions of Plautus and other Roman comedies, this social role reversal within the confines of the drama was more accepted. and such a \u2018stock character\u2019 with, for example, elements of the foolish old man\/old lover, could also perhaps be utilised to further demonstrate and defuse the potential attraction of counter arguments to Christianity and martyrdom in such a way as to make them more abhorrent to congregations because they are coming from such a demonstrably ignoble character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of this use of familiar theatrical tropes and characters feeds into the broader ideas of writers wanting to make Christianity seem more recognisable rather than threatening or subversive. For audiences listening to the familiar stories of martyrs such as Crispina, perhaps having heard it many times before, they would have had an active role such as imagining where their own sympathies might sit. In this way, the authors of these texts could borrow and play around with tropes from Classical drama, all of which would be familiar to their audience. For example, by reframing or re-characterising the figure of the persecutor as only superficially respectable, and contrasted against the martyr\u2019s courage and virtue, the persecutor\u2019s actual behaviour is revealed to be barbaric and un-Roman, and the defeat of this ridiculous would-be authority figure who fails to understand the \u2018true\u2019 faith is a happy ending and restoration of societal norms. In so many of these and other martyr texts women appear only very briefly, so looking at them through different lenses also offers new ways to consider how ancient audiences might have viewed their role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ancient Sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Augustine, Sermon on Psalm 120<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musurillo, H., trans. The Acts of Christian Martyrs<\/em>. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plautus, The Rope<\/em>; Casina; The Brothers Maenaechemus<\/em> (translation by E. Segal)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tertullian, On Spectacles<\/em> (trans. T.R. Glover)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary Scholarship:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burrus, V. (1995). \u201cReading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius,\u201d Journal of Early Christian Studies<\/em> 3, no. 1, 44.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Castelli, E. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making<\/em>. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cobb, L.S. Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts<\/em>. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constantinou, Stavroula. \u201cThekla the Virgin: Women\u2019s Sacrifice and the Generic Martyr.\u201d In The \u2018Other\u2019 Martyrs: Women and the Poetics of Sexuality, Sacrifice, and Death in World Literature<\/em>, eds. Alireza Korangy and Leyla Rouhi. Vol. 1 of Martyrdom and Literature<\/em>, edited by Alireza Korangy, 73-86. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corke-Webster, J. Eusebius and Empire: Constructing Church and Rome in the <\/em>Ecclesiastical History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farrugia, J. \u201cAugustine on St Crispina: Comparing Augustine\u2019s Image of the Saint with Her Acta<\/em>.\u201d Non Laborat Qui Amat (lo. Eu.tr. 48, 1)<\/em>: A Festschrift in honour of Professor Salvino Caruana O.S.A. on his 70th<\/sup> birthday, edited by Andre P. De Battista, Jonathan Farrugia and Hector Scerri, 135-144. Malta: Maltese Augustinian Province, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lugaresi, L. \u201cRhetoric Against the Theatre and Theatre by Means of Rhetoric in John Chrysostom.\u201d In Rhetorical Strategies in Late Antique Literature<\/em>, edited by A.J. Quiroga Puertas, 117-148. Leiden: Brill, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy, K. “Prologues Between Performance and Fiction.\u201d In Roman Drama and Its Contexts<\/em>, edited by S. Frangoulidis, S.J. Harrison and G. Manuwald, 203-214. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebillard, E. The Early Martyr Narratives: Neither Authentic Accounts nor Forgeries.<\/em> Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ronsse, E. “Rhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas.” Journal of Early Christian Studies <\/em>14, no. 3 (2006): 283-327.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaw, B. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Webb, R.  Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity. <\/em>Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Yasin, A.M. \u201cThe Pilgrim and the Arch: Paths and Passageways at Qal\u2019 at Sem\u2019an, Sinai, Abu Mena, and Tebessa.\u201d In Excavating Pilgrimage: Archaeological Approaches to Sacred Travel and Movement in the Ancient World<\/em>, edited by T.M. Kristensen and W. Friese. London: Routledge, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> For a study of the use of rhetoric in popular Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis <\/em>see Erin Ronsse, \u201cRhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,\u201d Journal of Early Christian Studies<\/em> 14, no. 3 (2006); see also Eric Rebillard, The Early Martyr Narratives: Neither Authentic Accounts nor Forgeries<\/em> (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2020). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> While many scholars have attributed this basilica to Crispina, the epigraphic evidence is extremely tenuous!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Augustine, Sermon on Psalm 120<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Jonathan Farrugia, \u201cAugustine on St Crispina: Comparing Augustine\u2019s Image of the Saint with Her Acta<\/em>,\u201d Non Laborat Qui Amat (lo. Eu.tr. 48, 1)<\/em>: A Festschrift in honour of Professor Salvino Caruana O.S.A. on his 70th<\/sup> birthday (Malta: Maltese Augustinian Province, 2020), 135-144.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> A.M. Yasin, \u201cThe Pilgrimage and the Arch: Paths and Pathways at Qal\u2019at Sem\u2019an, Sinai, Abu Mena and Tabessa,\u201d in Excavating Pilgrimage: Archaeological Approaches to Sacred Travel and Movement in the Ancient World<\/em>, eds. T.M. Kristensen and W. Friese (London: Routledge, 2017), 181.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Rebillard 2021: 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> One recent example that has made parallels between themes from tragedies is Stavroula Constantinou, \u201cThekla the Virgin: Women\u2019s Sacrifice and the Generic Martyr,\u201d in The \u2018Other\u2019 Martys: Women and the Poetics of Sexuality, Sacrifice, and Death in World Literatures<\/em>, eds. Alireza Korangy and Leyla Rouhi, vol. 1 of Martyrdom and Literature<\/em>, ed. Alireza Korangy (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019): 73-86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Christopher Polt points specifically at examples of how the late Republican orator and politician Cicero and his approximate contemporary the poet Catullus incorporate and reflect elements of Roman comedy in their works (Christopher Polt, Catallus and Roman Comedy: Theatricality and Personal Drama in the Late Republic<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> Tertullian On Spectacle<\/em> 29-30, (trans. by T.R. Glover).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a>Leonardo Lugaresi, \u201cRhetoric Against the Theatre and Theatre by Means of Rhetoric in John Chrysostom,\u201d in Rhetorical Strategies in Late Antique Literature: Images, Metatexts and Interpretation<\/em>, ed. Alberto J. Quiroga Puertas, (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017), 117-148.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> R. Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); L.S. Cobb, Divine Deliverance<\/em>: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs<\/em> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 303. Diocletiano nouies et Maximiano [octies] Augustis consulibus, die nonarum decembrium aput coloniam Thebestinam in secretario pro tribunal adsidente Anullino proconsule , commentariense officium dixit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> K. McCarthy, \u201cPrologues Between Performance and Fiction,\u201d in Roman Drama and Its Context<\/em>s, eds. S Frangoulidis, S.J. Harrison and G. Manuwald (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016) 204.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a>  E. Segal, ed. Classical Comedy<\/em> (London: Penguin Books) 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> McCarthy, \u201cPrologues Between Performance and Fiction,\u201d 206.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> To borrow phrasing from work by Kenneth Quinn, The Catullan Revolution<\/em> (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 1959), and C. Polt, Catalus and Roman Comedy: Theatricality and Personal Drama in the Late Republic<\/em> (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021) 174, on Catullan poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> Musurillo 1972: 305. Anullinus dixit: Ego sacrum praeceptum <\/strong>offero, quod obserues<\/strong>. Crispina respondit: Praeceptum obseruabo<\/strong>, sed domini mei Iesu Christi [my emphasis].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> Cf. V. Burrus, \u201cReading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius,\u201d Journal of Early Christian Studies<\/em> 3, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 44 (\u201cThis distinctly gendered tension [\u2026] invite[s] an implied male listener into a complex dual identification with both male sacrificer and female victim.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Cf. James Corke-Webster\u2019s argument looking specifically at Eusebius\u2019 martyrs James Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire: Constructing Church and Rome in the <\/em>Ecclesiastical History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alice van den Bosch University of Exeter In the Martyrdom of St Crispina (from hereon Crispina), the eponymous heroine from Tebessa in Mauretania Caesarensis (a Roman province in North Africa) is brought before the proconsul Anullinus who asks her why she refuses to make a sacrifice to the Roman gods and gets increasingly frustrated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCourtroom Drama: Constructing Antagonist and Audience in Early Martyr Acta - Ex Historia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/exhistoria\/2023\/01\/05\/alice-van-den-bosch-courtroom-drama-constructing-antagonist-and-audience-in-early-martyr-acta\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Courtroom Drama: Constructing Antagonist and Audience in Early Martyr Acta - 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